Dear Pedro

I was so saddened today, as I watched You throw that big pot-plant through my living room window, to see how far You had been dragged down by the whirlpool of circumstances surrounding your life. It made me feel suddenly guilty -or, at least, an inadequate friend.

During the course of the past year, I watched You get sucked ever more frequently into the cycles of ecstacy and despair and I did nothing to help You break free of that vortex; didn’t even warn You.

Mate, You really have to face up to the reality of your situation. You have no access to the children You love, whose photographs adorned the walls of your State Housing unit; and now You have no unit, as they have evicted You. Mark tells me they turned up and gave You five minutes to pack up your stuff before they changed the locks. I hope You took your children’s pictures with You, Pedro, because they may well save your life.

As I sit here on my soil-spattered porch, amid the shards of glass and pottery and the dying plant, I look back at this afternoon and wish I had had the strength to speak honestly with You then, to explain my own situation, and perhaps shed a little light on yours. Instead, I closed the door in your face, Mate, and I sent You away, and so You felt You had to do what You did.

(I’m sorry for having had to do that, Pedro, but I was on the phone to my bank, trying to sort out a complex issue, and You did keep shouting through the flywire door, despite my gesturing for You to be quiet and to wait. And last time You were here, a full packet of my painkillers did go missing...)

You had to shout those vile accusations, calculated to outrage my neighbours, and to yell those stupid threats to burn my house down.

“I’ll come back with a Molotov cocktail,” You screeched, “but in the meantime, this’ll do...”

And You heaved that heavy pot-plant high and hard against my window, and both were smashed, and my Son had to see what You had done, and hear your menacing, intimidating, dumb-**** threats to come back and set our flat aflame.

That’s why You don’t have access to your kids, Pedro –because You don’t have a clue about how vulnerable and impressionable kids are, how easily besmirched by your violent filth they are. You didn’t think once of James, and how threatened he would feel. You did all that stupid, brain-fried stuff, right in front of him, and You didn’t care what his reaction might be.

I don’t like having to say it, Pedro, but that is why my child lives with me, and why You only see your kids on their birthdays and at Christmas, if You’re lucky. Because, no matter what I might have smoked or drank or pumped inside my vein, my Son is always still foremost in my mind; His needs come first.

So I hope You still have those photographs of your beautiful children, Pedro, and that You have a genuine expectation of spending lots more time with them, before it is too late. I hope You get a chance to know them, and for them to know the real, loving person You can be, before You become entirely irrelevant to them. Because that would be a tragedy.

With Love and Forgiveness (and a wish that You’d come clean up the mess),

Wow, Thank You, Lilt and Glow... I'm so pleased You read and commented.

I have to say, in all honesty, that there is a fair bit of 'projection' in my letter to Pedro. It could just as easily be a letter to my baser self. I am not a perfect parent, by any means (though I can't think of anything better to aspire to be) and I can be as selfish as the next junkie, at times. But James has always had a roof over his head, has never missed a meal, always had clean clothes to wear ...and plenty of phone credit... so his basic human needs are met.

Pedro has been on a major bender for a long while -trying to blot out the pain of separation from his kids- and he doesn't realise that his substance abuse only serves to increase the distance between them.

Ah Dex...this sucks. I agree with our wise little sock puppet. He knows...he's angry at you for not rescuing him, but also envious of what you have. Whatever you did or didn't do, he still came to you. Which shows that you are a good friend.

But whatever you did or didn't do - people can't save people. We can help them. But they need to *want* to get better.

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